SALAMANDRA 47(1) 36–42 20 February 2011 CoIrSrSeNsp o0n03d6e–n3ce375 Correspondence ‘Chamaliens’ on the Hawaiian Islands: spatial risk assessment for the invasive Jackson’s chameleon (Chamaeleonidae) Dennis Rödder 1, Wolfgang Böhme 1 & Stefan Lötters 2 1) Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig, Department of Herpetology, Adenauerallee 160, 53113 Bonn, Germany 2) Trier University, Department of Biogeography, Am Wissenschaftspark 25 + 27, 54296 Trier, Germany Corresponding author: Dennis Rödder, e-mail: [email protected] Manuscript received: 13 April 2010 Alien species are of major concern to conservation biology, al. (2009) documented predation on endemic snail and in- agriculture and the human society, as they may become in- sect species, including some threatened with extinction, vasive and successfully compete with native species, nega- and Hagey et al. (2010) commented on its foraging strat- tively influence crop production, and cause health prob- egy. Further studies on the natural history and distribution lems. Several reptile species are considered invasive alien of T. jacksonii on Hawaiian Islands, coupled with monitor- species, but most of them are little studied (Kraus 2009). ing and management efforts, are required. Amongst these species are a few chameleons. Apparently, GIS-based Species Distribution Models (SDMs) are a several of the Chamaeleo chamaeleo (Linnaeus, 1758) pop- helpful tool towards these goals, as they focus on species’ ulations in the Mediterranean (e.g. Crete, Malta, Sicily) are potential distributions. In the case of invasive alien spe- non-autochthonous and their presence can be linked to cies, they can be understood as spatial risk assessments. historical trade routes (e.g. Klaver 1981). Chamaeleo af Technically, a SDM assesses a species’ ecological niche and ricanus Laurenti, 1768 from northern Africa was translo- projects it into geographical space (Rödder et al. 2010a). cated from the Nile delta onto the Peloponesos where it has Niche information is obtained at presence and sometimes maintained reproducing populations perhaps since antiq- absence sites of the study species; climatic niche informa- uity (e.g. Böhme et al. 1998, Böhme 2000). More recently, tion has been demonstrated to be a good predictor for in- the Malagasy Furcifer pardalis (Cuvier, 1829) has become vasion success in alien reptile species (e.g. Bomford et invasive on Réunion Island (e.g. Bourgat 1970). al. 2009; Rödder et al. 2009b). The resulting map shows One of the most successful invasive chameleons is Jack- similarities with the niche elsewhere, e.g. by different grid son’s chameleon, Trioceros jacksonii (Boulenger, 1896), values, interpreted as ‘likelihood’ of the species’ potential which is native to Afromontane Kenya and Tanzania occurrence (e.g. Peterson & Vieglais 2001, Rödder & (Fig. 1). Popular as a pet and commonly traded and im- Lötters 2010). Projecting SDMs onto past or future cli- ported by the thousands from Kenya and Tanzania (Car- mate scenarios may allow simulations of a species’ poten- penter et al. 2004), this species was introduced to Oahu, tial response to environmental changes (e.g. Rödder & Hawaiian Islands in 1972 (e.g. McKeown 1991, Waring Schulte 2010). For example, Rödder (2009) provided a 1997). Apparently, established populations are referable spatial risk assessment for the invasive non-autochthonous to the large, up to 35 cm in total length, subspecies T. j. frog Eleutherodactylus coqui on the Hawaiian Islands, sug- xantholophus (Eason, Ferguson & Hebrard, 1988) from gesting range allocation towards higher elevations under Kenya and Tanzania (McKeown 1991) (Fig. 2). As a result future anthropogenic climate change, thus affecting pro- of inter-island transport which has only been restricted tected areas. since 1997, Jackson’s chameleon currently has established In this paper, we develop SDMs for Jackson’s chameleon wild populations on all the main islands including the is- in the Hawaiian Islands under current and future climates land of Hawaii, Maui and Kauii as a result of multiple intro- based on the species’ climatic envelope at its invaded and ductions and subsequent spread (Fig. 1; Waring 1997 cited native African distribution ranges. The goal is to appreci- in Hagey et al. 2010). The species is especially common in ate the geographical potential of this species in its invaded wetter habitats at elevations from 100–1,000 m above sea range. level (McKeown 1996, Holland et al. 2009) and inhab- For SDM building, we used presence data from the na- its disturbed habitats as well as forested areas (McKeown tive African and the invaded Hawaiian ranges of Trioceros 1991, Waring 1997). The ecological impact of Hawaiian T. jacksonii as available via the Global Biodiversity Informa- jacksonii has not been studied. Only recently, Holland et tion Facility (http://www.gbif.org) and HerpNet (http:// © 2011 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Herpetologie und Terrarienkunde e.V. (DGHT), Rheinbach, Germany A36ll articles available online at http://www.salamandra-journal.com Correspondence Figure 1. Species records used for model building in T. jacksonii’s invaded Hawaiian range and its native range in Kenya and Tanzania (insert). www.herpnet.org). When necessary, georeferencing of lo- of coordinates. Records were only considered if they could cality data was conducted with the BioGeoMancer (http:// be unambiguously assigned to a single grid cell, leaving a bg.berkeley.edu/latest/). DIVA-GIS 7.1.6 (Hijmans et al. total number of 81 presence records for modelling (Fig. 1). 2002; http://www.diva-gis.org) was used to check accuracy Information on current climate, i.e., for the period 1950–2000, was obtained from the WorldClim database at a spatial resolution of 30 arc sec (Hijmans et al. 2005; http://www.worldclim.org). For future climate, as expected for the year 2080, we downloaded interpolations of three different global change scenarios of the third and fourth assessments of the IPCC (2007); spatial resolution 30 arc sec (Ramirez & Jarvis 2008; http://gisweb.ciat.cgiar.org/ GCMPage). These anthropogenic climate change pre- dictions, simulating conditions as expected in the two IPCC story lines A2a and B2a, were derived from simu- lations of three climate models CCCma-CGCM2 (Flato et al. 2000, Flato & Boer 2001), CSIRO-MK2 (Gordon & O´Farrell 1997), and UKMO-HadCM3 (Gordon et al. 2000, Pope et al. 2000). Climate variables comprised monthly minimum and maximum temperatures, and aver- age precipitation per month. Based on these, we computed 19 ‘bioclimatic’ variables with DIVA-GIS; these are com- monly used for species distribution modelling (e.g. Busby 1991, Beaumont et al. 2005). Since multicolinearity of pre- dictor variables may hamper successful SDM projection through space or time (e.g. Heikkinen et al. 2006), we extracted all ‘bioclimatic’ values from the species records and performed a pair-wise correlation analysis based on Pearson’s correlation coefficient with XLSTAT 2010 (http:// www.adinsoft.com). For SDM computation, only variables with R2 < 0.75 were considered, resulting in a final variable set comprising ’mean monthly temperature range’, ’tem- perature seasonality’, ’maximum temperature of the warm- est month’, ’minimum temperature of the coldest month’, ’ annual temperature range’, ’annual precipitation’, ’precipita- tion in the wettest month’, ’precipitation seasonality’, ’pre- cipitation in the warmest quarter’ and ’precipitation in the coldest quarter’. It was suggested that these variables de- scribe environmental conditions that are physiologically Figure 2. Non-collected male Trioceros jacksonii xantholophus important to T. jacksonii (Bennett 2004, Andrews 2008, from Parklands in Nairobi. Lin 1979, Lin & Nelson 1980). 37 Correspondence Figure 3. Comparisons of the climate spaces occupied in T. jack sonii’s native and invaded Hawaiian ranges. For SDM development, Maxent 3.2.2 was applied (Phil- “2009”), and potential impact of climate change (Rödder lips et al. 2006, Phillips & Dudík 2008), a machine- & Weinsheimer 2009, Rödder et al. 2010b). In most cas- learning algorithm following the principle of maximum es, Maxent outperforms comparable SDM methods, even entropy (Jaynes 1957). Maxent has been successfully ap- when the sample size is small (Hernandez et al. 2006, plied in studies assessing possible spreads of invasive al- Wisz et al. 2008). This was further confirmed by Maxent’s ien species (Giovanelli et al. 2007, Rödder & Lötters ability to predict previously unknown populations in poor- 2010), pathogens (Rödder et al. 2009a, Lötters et al. 2010 ly known species (Pearson et al. 2007, Weinsheimer et 38 Correspondence current A2a B2a Figure 4. Potential distribution of Jackson’s chameleon on the Hawaiian Islands under current climate and two future anthropogenic climate change scenarios (A2a, B2a), based on a Maxent Species Distribution Model and bioclimatic conditions at the species’ native African occurrence. Warmer colours indicated higher suitability to the species when considering climate conditions only (each left) and when considering climate as well as land cover (each right). Established reserves are indicated as crosshatched areas. al. 2010) and even species that are likely to be new to sci- the species records, equalling the target group background ence (Raxworthy et al. 2003). Next to species presence approach suggested by Phillips et al. (2009). records, Maxent requires a set of pseudo-absence records For model evaluation, 70 % of the species records were for SDM computation. The selection of these is a crucial used for model training and the remaining 30 % for model step towards successful model building (Phillips 2008, testing via the Area Under Curve (AUC), referring to the Mateo et al. 2010, VanDerWal et al. 2009). Herein, we Receiver Operating characteristic Curve (Phillips et al. randomly selected 20 pseudo-absence records per species 2006, Fielding & Bell 1997). Furthermore, Maxent allows record within a circular buffer of 10 km as recommended tracing back the relative contribution of each variable to the by Mateo et al. (2010). This results in a set of pseudo-ab- final model, and so facilitates comparisons with physiologi- sence records with a similar spatial structure as present in cal properties of the target species. As data splits may affect 39 Correspondence the model due to the exclusion of some species records that pogenic climate change with A2a and B2a scenarios, which represent features not present in the remaining records, this forecast nearly identical and only slightly less suitable con- procedure was repeated 100 times and averages were com- ditions for T. jacksonii (Fig. 4). puted subsequently. Land cover data for the Hawaii Islands Invasive Hawaiian Jackson’s chameleons are suggested to were obtained from the Coastal Service Center of the Na- interact with native biota, at least as a predator to endemic tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (http:// fauna (Holland et al. 2009). While the impact of this spe- www.csc.noaa.gov/crs/lca/hawaii.html); land cover classes cies is poorly understood, we here provide evidence how included high- and low-intensity development, cultivated severe the problem may be or may become as T. jacksonii land, grassland, evergreen forest, scrub/shrub, palustrine finds suitable habitat almost all over the Hawaiian Islands. emergent wetlands, unconsolidated shoreline, bare land, This emphasizes, in concert with Holland et al. (2009), and water. Information on current reserve networks was the severity of a problem that should no longer be neglect- adopted from the Office of Planning, State of Hawaii. ed. Besides the impact on potential prey invertebrates, it Comparisons of the occupied climate space in T. jackso should be considered hypothetically that T. jacksonii might nii’s native and invaded Hawaiian ranges revealed that the compete with other local fauna for food resources. highest similarities existed in the ‘precipitation in the wet- The potential invasion success and expected damage test month’ and the ‘precipitation in the warmest quarter’ to the native fauna may be unparalleled by other invasive and the greatest differences in the ‘mean monthly tempera- chameleons, although potential distribution and ecological ture range’, ‘annual temperature range’ and the ‘precipita- impact studies remain limited (e.g. Dimaki et al. 2001). At tion in the coldest quarter’ (Fig. 3). The ‘minimum tem- least the spatial potential of Chamaeleo africanus in main- perature of the coldest month’ experienced within T. jack land Greece may be limited as, despite of the species’ oc- sonii’s invaded range is well above its critical thermal mini- currence on the Peloponesos since historical times, there mum (5.3 ± 0.5 °C, n = 8, Bennett 2004), but well below is no indication of past or present dispersal (W. Böhme, its voluntary minimum temperature (29.1 ± 0.32 °C, n = unpubl. data). Likewise, the Réunion population of Furci 7, Bennett 2004). Its preferred body temperature (32.1 ± fer pardalis is suggested to be restricted to a small, particu- 0.24° C, n = 7, Bennett 2004), voluntary maximum body larly dry and hot area on the western coast near St. Paul, temperature (34.2 ± 0.31, n = 7, Bennett 2004), panting although this species has recently been found elsewhere on threshold (36.2 ± 0.67, n =5, Bennett 2004), and critical the island, but its invasion success there remains unknown thermal maximum (41.0 ± 0.15, n = 8, Bennett 2004; 42.0 (E. Koch, pers. comm., March 2010). Invasion success was ± 0.91° C, n = 10, Lin 1980) are slightly higher than the apparently limited in Furcifer oustaleti (Mocquard, 1894), maximum temperature of the warmest month within its which was translocated from Madagascar to near Nairobi, invaded range. Differences of up to 6 °C may be compen- Kenya, but where this species has not been documented sated by heliothermic thermoregulation, and feeding ac- since 1974 (Spawls et al. 2002). Trioceros jacksonii seems tivity may occur at temperatures as low as 10 °C (Bennett to be exceptional among chameleons for its invasive poten- 2004), however. tial, as shown by its successful colonisation of the Hawai- It has been suggested that climatic conditions support- ian Archipelago. ing successful reproduction and balanced sex ratios can be strong predictors for the geographic range limits of rep- tile species (e.g. Rödder et al. 2009b). In T. jacksonii, re- production is clearly associated with higher precipitation References during the long wet season in East Africa (Lin 1979, Lin & Nelson 1981). Although the amount of annual precip- Andrews, R. M. (2008): Lizards in the slow lane: thermal biology itation is quite similar in the chameleons’ native and in- of chameleons. – Journal of Thermal Biology, 33: 57–61. vaded ranges, precipitation seasonality is much more pro- Beaumont, L. J., L. Hughes & M. Poulsen (2005): Predicting nounced in its native range. 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